John Boorman's LOTR adaptation gets made in the 70s

Petike

Petike

Abandon all hope, ye who enter here... :D

OK, let's say that John Boorman, after the success of Deliverance, decides to not make his wacky carte blanche epic Zardoz (depraving us of Sean Connery in nappies and boots, but saving money and director cred) and focuses on getting his LOTR script made (along with help from Rospo Pallenberg).

ITTL, Boorman will not make Excalibur - a finer movie that resulted from the fallout of his unrealized LOTR adaptation. His career will be different and his legacy (among the average filmgoer and Tolkien fans alike) will stir up controversies, though ones different from OTL.

Don't know Boorman's OTL script for LOTR yet ? Well, let me remedy that :
http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/John_Boorman's_The_Lord_of_the_Rings
http://forum.barrowdowns.com/showthread.php?t=12786
http://forums.theonering.com/viewtopic.php?t=51271&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0
http://odd74.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=tolkien&action=display&thread=6502
http://faculty-staff.ou.edu/C/Janet.B.Croft-1/three_rings_for_hollywood.htm
www.thetolkienforum.com

John Boorman's 70s script

OK I have to admit I found this somewhere else, but if true all the whingers about the small changes Jackson made should read it and think thank god we got a director up for the huge task of making such a phenomenal and hug effort of the book, which he was (IMO). This is absolutely...
www.thetolkienforum.com www.thetolkienforum.com

Quite a doozie in terms of deviations from the source material, right ? Well, let's assume most of it gets into the adaptation and then some... Would a backlash against Tolkien's works or their adaptations ensue in this world ? Or could Boorman maybe salvage it and make it more worthwhile than the OTL version he planned, despite several of his liberties and alterations still remaining ? Alternatively : What if he made the film prior to Deliverance ?

Update from 2023: On second thought... Nope, nope, nope ! I refer you to this, this, this and this detailed, four-part video analysis of the script. The script might be entertainingly insane, but it's also beyond idiotic and rather boring, the characters moronic and huge swathes of the storyline and details not even hinted at. If Boorman's script was made into a film verbatim and was people's first impression of The Lord of the Rings, it would have permanently damaged Tolkien's reputation in the wider public. Even among those willing to entertain the idea this is simply a bad, bad, awful adaptation. "Unbelievable madhouse of a script" describes Boorman's sex-obsessed acid trip well.
 
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RRA

It would be a disaster and damage the source material's reputation like a certain Sly Stallone movie did to a certain iconic British comic book superhero cop. Except even worse.

LOTR as 1 movie? How stupid.
 
Petike

Petike

RRA said:
It would be a disaster and damage the source material's reputation like a certain Sly Stallone movie did to a certain iconic British comic book superhero cop. Except even worse.

LOTR as 1 movie? How stupid.
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So, basically... It would be like the 80s DeLaurentis/Lynch adaptation of Dune ?

That's a fun comparison. Dune has always had problems with its inheritors and with adaptations. Tolkien and his works have been the opposite - successes on both fronts.
 

Flubber

Banned
Petike said:
So, basically... It would be like the 80s DeLaurentis/Lynch adaptation of Dune ?
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That's both an interesting analogy and an interesting question.

None of the Dune adaptations have been particularly successful either financially or critically. Nor have they been much liked by the Dune fanbase. When the topic comes up, I routinely here how Dune is essentially "un-filmable", but is that more a result of the earlier failures than anything else? And would Boorman's LOTR - and his adaptation would have been a failure - result in the same label for LOTR?

Thanks for the links. I'd read tidbits concerning the Boorman/Pallnberg script over the years but I'd never known just how strange it actually was. There are some intriguing bits in it though. The "sleeping/drugged" orcs in Moria whose hearts are awakened by the Fellowship's footsteps, the "birthing" ritual Gimli is forced through to recall the racial memory necessary to open Moria's hidden door, and, perhaps most fantastic of all, an elvish kabuki play of sorts put on at Rivendell which provides the viewers with the whole Ring/Sauron backstory.
 
Petike

Petike

Flubber said:
That's both an interesting analogy and an interesting question.
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Why, thank you... :D

Flubber said:
None of the Dune adaptations have been particularly successful either financially or critically. Nor have they been much liked by the Dune fanbase. When the topic comes up, I routinely here how Dune is essentially "un-filmable", but is that more a result of the earlier failures than anything else?
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Could be. I, for one, really dislike how some 90s Dune games aped the art designs of the Lynch adaptation far too much. And I say that as someone who doesn't like said adaptation, but doesn't hate it either - it's an average and relatively boring movie at best, but a very bad, half-baked adaptation. I did like the 2000s miniseries adaptations of Herbert's original trilogy, though. I think they came as close to doing a good adaptation of the books as humanly possible (I didn't mind the more theatre-like look - Dune isn't much of an action epic, it's more of a drama with some elements of satire, so I think it was fitting).

Flubber said:
And would Boorman's LOTR - and his adaptation would have been a failure - result in the same label for LOTR?
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Speaking of LOTR, Dune and their possible 70s adaptations... I think Boorman's LOTR would be a lot like the unrealized Jodorowsky adaptation of Dune : Bizarre, bloated and confusing as f***. :p Moviegovers would procclaim it to be crap, fans would commit seppuku and cry bloody tears. And you can bet that if anyone tried to make a newer adaptation several decades later (something more akin to Jackson's films), a certain minority of LOTR fans would bash the newer movies and procclaim Boorman's adaptation to be "not very faithful to the book, but a lot artsier !". :rolleyes: Such is human (and especially fanboy) nature. ;) (I mean, seriously: One PJ-hating guy in that thread at the BD forums claimed that Boorman's movie would somehow be more faithful to Tolkien, just because it wasn't made by teh ev000l PJ. :rolleyes:)

Flubber said:
Thanks for the links. I'd read tidbits concerning the Boorman/Pallnberg script over the years but I'd never known just how strange it actually was. There are some intriguing bits in it though. The "sleeping/drugged" orcs in Moria whose hearts are awakened by the Fellowship's footsteps, the "birthing" ritual Gimli is forced through to recall the racial memory necessary to open Moria's hidden door, and, perhaps most fantastic of all, an elvish kabuki play of sorts put on at Rivendell which provides the viewers with the whole Ring/Sauron backstory.
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I think a lot of the ideas explain the weirder bits of Excalibur. :D I often wonder whether the infamous implied-sex-scene-in-full-armour was formerly meant to be the Aragorn-Eowyn one in Boorman's treatment of LOTR, before he assigned it to Lancelot and Guinevere ! :eek: :D Or whether it stood in for the Frodo-Galadriel scene ?!!! :eek: :eek: :eek: *imagines Frodo taking off his mithril shirt before sex scene ensues, pukes* :D

Dammit, someone needs to make a YT parody of "If Boorman did LOTR" - kind of like the already existing ones, e.g. "If Lynch did Return of the Jedi". :D
 
Petike

Petike

Also, found this on DeviantArt:

john_boorman__s_lord_of_the_rings_by_atomtastic-d51xxsx.png


:D
 

Mike Stearns

Petike said:
Or whether it stood in for the Frodo-Galadriel scene ?!!! :eek: :eek: :eek: *imagines Frodo taking off his mithril shirt before sex scene ensues, pukes* :D
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LOL! You think the Sam/Frodo Hobbit porn jokes were bad after FOTR, just imagine a Frodo/Galadriel sex scene. EW! No thank you!
 
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